FROM: Mark Adams National Security Commentator

In 1981, Jeffrey Epstein resigned from the investment banking firm Bear Stearns amid suspicions of insider trading. At the time of his death in 2019, he was an incredibly wealthy man. Between his collection of lavish homes, two private Caribbean islands and nearly $380 million in cash and investments, he was worth $578 million, according to his estate.

By all measures Epstein was enormously successful yet according to the Justice Department he still found the time to victimize at least 1,000 women and children. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/11/20/epstein-1000-survivors-victims-not-politics/87335276007/

Recently released documents from the Justice Department’s investigation of the accused sex trafficker reveal a striking panoply of high-profile individuals connected with him.

Former Treasury Larry Summers has resigned from Harvard University, Dr. Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize winner, has resigned as co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Norway’s former prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland was hospitalized due to the stress caused by the Epstein scandal.

Peter Mandelson, formerly Britain’s ambassador to the United States, was fired in September 2025 only to be arrested on Feb. 23, 2026 on suspicion of misconduct in public office tied to allegations of passing confidential documents to Epstein.

Others carefully scrutinized include United Kingdom’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, whose brother, King Charles, stripped him of the title prince. He was arrested Feb. 19 on suspicion of “misconduct in public office,” which British lawmakers and media following the case say is tied to allegations of sharing confidential documents with the late financier while he was Britain’s trade envoy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/larry-summers-bill-gates-fallout-from-epstein-files-is-widening/ar-AA1X4ADS?ocid=BingNewsSerp

Meanwhile the list continues to grow.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/24/epstein-files-the-arrests-and-the-resignations

A central enigma that surrounds Epstein centers on the question of how does a person who began life as an unremarkable schoolteacher, relying on fake degrees and no pedigree, achieve nearness to the upper reaches of politics, finance, and academia?

At Bear Sterns Epstein learned how power functions inside institutions. While dating the daughter of a senior executive he learned first hand that relationships can outweigh formal rules and that proximity to senior officials can provide insulation.

Apparently the answer to the enigma lies less in Epstein’s personal skill than in the than in the way elite systems reward usefulness, tolerate ambiguity, and repeatedly choose comfort over confrontation. He also learned that access to elite circles has to be achieved incrementally. He joined boards, donated generously to academic and cultural institutions and embedded himself into philanthropic networks where influence seems to self-generate.

In 2005, seemingly out of nowhere, Epstein was appointed as a visiting fellow in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. This, after he had donated $200,000 to support the work of then-Professor Stephen Kosslyn, chair of the department.

According to Diane Lopez, Harvard Vice President, “Epstein regularly visited, had card key access to, and was provided a designated office space within [the program in evolutionary dynamics] until 2018.” https://ellieleonard.substack.com/p/how-jeffrey-epstein-cosplayed-his

Amazing when one considers that in 2008 Epstein was convicted on charges of sexually molesting a minor!

Jeffrey Epstein’s path to fame and fortune began inauspiciously when he conned his way into New York City’s upper-crust private-school system. Graduating from high school two years early in 1969, he didn’t distinguish himself in college, eventually dropping out of New York University without a degree. Nonetheless he was hired at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan to teach high school math and physics.

“Students remember seeing ‘Mr. Epstein,’ then 21 years-old and still without a teaching degree, ‘wandering the halls in a fur coat, gold chains and an open shirt that exposed his chest.’”

Eventually Epstein’s immature conduct and lack of proper credentials caught up with him and he was asked to leave. But before leaving the Dalton School Epstein became friends with a student’s father, Alan Greenberg, CEO of Bear Stearns. He would spend the next few years rising in the ranks at Bear Stearns, an investment bank that is said to pride itself in hiring unconventional talent.

https://ellieleonard.substack.com/p/how-jeffrey-epstein-cosplayed-his

Former State Dept. attorney Mike Benz chronicles a nexus involving Bear Sterns and the Bank of Commerce and Credit (BCCI) – by now both defunct entities – that catapulted Epstein into a fabric of intelligence networks. Although mostly circumstantial he makes a compelling case that while employed at Bear Sterns Epstein was used to facilitate many deals that involved money laundering on a global scale using opaque tax havens which, according to James Henry of the Tax Justice Network, “may have more than $30 trillion hidden in tax havens— $40 trillion, if yachts, real estate, and artwork are included.”

https://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf

$30 TRILLION hidden in tax havens? That is larger than the entire US economy!! All stashed in jurisdictions infamous for their impenetrable secrecy. This is made possible thanks to the complicity of banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse, HSBC, and Citigroup. These institutions at least partially account for the offshore world that provides the ultra-wealthy a means of moving assets through a maze of shell companies deliberately designed to create layers of incomprehensibility that make authentic ownership nearly impossible to trace.

Where are these tax havens and who uses them? The tentacles of tax havens form a shadowy worldwide network that includes the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and Panama. Beyond that there is Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Channel Islands in Europe. Not to mention Cyprus and Malta in the Mediterranean. This murky monetary world is occupied by Russian oligarchs, European royalty, Arab sheikhs, along with the titans of Wall Street and Silicon Valley with their super yachts and private jets.

In 1975 after the Church Committee investigations curtailed CIA domestic operations inadvertently creating a need for privatized, off-the-books intelligence financing that circumvented legitimate banking. According to Benz this need dovetailed into the hands of a Bear Sterns BCCI joint operation that served as a conduit for CIA operations, arms deals and even drug money. Benz further alleges that Jeffrey Epstein was the liaison for this joint venture.

During a podcast on Human Events Benz talked about some of Epstein’s unusual perks including prime property overlooking Central Park that was rented to him by the State Department!

“What the heck is the State Department doing with a transaction like that?” Benz demanded.

https://humanevents.com/2024/01/05/exclusive-why-did-the-us-state-department-lease-a-nyc-apartment-to-jeffrey-epstein#google_vignette

Adding more suspicion is Epstein’s client base at Bear Stearns which included Edgar Bronfman (Seagram’s heir with alleged organized crime and Israeli intelligence connections) and Adnan Khashoggi the Saudi arms dealer who had a central role in Iran-Contra. These weren’t typical wealth management clients but focal points of international intelligence and arms trafficking networks. https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/26/top-10-new-epstein-insights-from-mike-benz/

From at least 2000 to 2007, Epstein chaired a company registered in Bermuda called Liquid Funding Ltd. It was partially owned by Bear Stearns, where Epstein had initially worked. Recall it was the collapse of Bear Sterns that triggered the 2008 financial crisis – the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression when on March 13, 2008, Bear Stearns delivered a startling ultimatum to the Federal Reserve: If it did not provide billions of dollars in funds within the next 24 hours, the firm would file for bankruptcy.

Raise a billion dollars in 24 hours?? Surely this was the mother of all ultimatums! Knowing full well that the collapse of Bear Sterns could provoke a systemic meltdown that threatened financial markets across the globe the Federal Reserve had no choice but to take immediate and extreme measures.

It turns out that Epstein’s offshore company was loaded up with some of the financial products — like mortgage-backed securities and collateralized loan obligations — that were central to the financial blunders leading to the financial crisis.

But the shenanigans didn’t stop there. Liquid was evidently a shell company and its directorship duties merely perfunctory.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/jeffrey-epsteins-offshore-fortune-traced-to-paradise-papers/

Benz further alleges Epstein personally arranged CIA airline contracts for Southern Air Transport (SAT), a CIA proprietary airline used during Iran-Contra to smuggle arms and facilitate covert funding. https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/26/top-10-new-epstein-insights-from-mike-benz/

What is this about?

A December 2025 article in the American Conservative titled Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How The Iran–Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base explained how Epstein helped clothing fashion tycoon Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA’s Iran–Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.

In 1995, SAT relocated its headquarters from Miami, Florida, to Columbus, Ohio the headquarters of Les Wexner’s business empire. The American Conservative article provides staunch evidence that Epstein played a pivotal role in relocating the planes.

Consequently the planes that previously carried arms to Iran and Nicaragua were repurposed to deliver clothes to feed Wexner’s sprawling network of retail chains, including Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch.

In 1987, as the Iran–Contra operation was unraveling, Epstein emerged as a key financial advisor to Leslie Wexner. Eventually he became an officer of several Wexner shell companies. Epstein’s control culminated when Wexner signed a document giving Epstein power of attorney to act on his behalf in all affairs. A sweep of the pen gave Epstein personal control of Wexner’s vast fortune including the right to sign property transactions on Wexner’s behalf.

According to veteran Columbus journalist Bob Fitrakis Ohio’s former Inspector General David Sturtz provided him with “a lot of information about Wexner and Epstein’s ties to organized crime and the intelligence community.”

Fitrakis went on to explain that “Sturtz was dismissed from the Inspector General position in 1994, which he told Fitrakis he believed was connected to his inquiry into Wexner and Southern Air Transport.” Sturtz’s successor, Donald Cox, quit less than two months on the job. Cox was under heavy criticism for firing Sturtz’s entire staff immediately after taking office. By the time a replacement was found the Wexner matter died down so that all the information Sturtz accumulated regarding Wexner’s ties to organized remained shrouded in a maze of shell companies and sophisticated money laundering enterprises. .

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/epstein-israel-and-the-cia-how-the-iran-contra-planes-landed-at-les-wexners-base/

– Mark Adams National Security Commentator